Elton Sarah
Department of Sociology, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada.
J Rural Stud. 2023 Feb;98:59-67. doi: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2023.01.017. Epub 2023 Jan 30.
The Ontario Food Terminal is a central node in the North American food system, the third largest wholesale produce market on the continent. During the first 20 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, qualitative research was conducted with food system actors to understand the impact of the public health crisis on produce supply chains. This paper contributes to the study of nonhumans in agri-food networks and rural spaces, specifically human-plant relations. Employing a posthumanist lens to investigate why produce supply chains continued to flow during the pandemic, it is argued that plants helped to keep supply chains moving at the Terminal in the face of crisis. Plant agency in this case is found to be the product of relationships with humans as well as nonhuman systems. This agency is collective in nature and is rooted in the plants' relationships with humans as perishable foods and commodities as well as ecosystem relationships. Further, the paper demonstrates how plant agency, that had political effects during the pandemic, is normalizing. This underlines the importance of considering the nature of the relationship in the context of relational agency, and highlights that it cannot be assumed that plants are allies in food system change.
安大略食品终端是北美食品系统的一个中心节点，是该大陆第三大农产品批发市场。在新冠疫情的前20个月里，对食品系统参与者进行了定性研究，以了解公共卫生危机对农产品供应链的影响。本文有助于研究农业食品网络和农村空间中的非人类，特别是人类与植物的关系。通过后人类主义视角来调查为什么农产品供应链在疫情期间仍继续运转，本文认为，面对危机，植物有助于维持终端的供应链运转。在这种情况下，植物的能动性被发现是与人类以及非人类系统关系的产物。这种能动性本质上是集体性的，植根于植物作为易腐食品和商品与人类的关系以及生态系统关系。此外，本文还展示了在疫情期间产生政治影响的植物能动性是如何常态化的。这凸显了在关系能动性背景下考虑关系本质的重要性，并强调不能假定植物是食品系统变革中的盟友。
